The Little Lightning Girl

4-This is the opposite of Headway.

(Above is James Potter, but picture brown eyes)

As soon as I walked into my dorm, I was greeted with two glaring sets of eyes.

I groaned and began changing into pajamas but it didn't stop them from confronting me. I knew I'd been rather distant all day, and I shouldn't have expected my two best friends to let me get away with it. But I'd hoped.

Kaley sat on the edge of her bed and snorted, "I know something is going on. You weren't in the room when we woke up this morning, and then at breakfast you barely said a word. Are you in danger? Does it have something to do with camp?"

I shook my head, which neither of them could see as I was in the midst of wrestling a sleep shirt over my face. My voice was muffled, but I spoke nonetheless, "It's nothing to do with camp. I want to tell you-"

"So tell us!" Rose blurted, "It isn't anything super dangerous, is it?"

I grimaced and plopped on my mattress, "I honestly can't tell how dangerous it's going to be."

"I should've known better than to ask," Rose groaned.

"James and Albus-" I started, then trailed off. We hadn't specifically said that I couldn't tell other students. And the Potters knew how close I was to Rose and Kaley, so I doubted they'd expect me to not tell them. I had promised them two years ago that no matter how dangerous something was, I'd tell them everything I could. And I knew there wasn't anyone in this school I trusted more.

"James and Albus saw Professor Lavens get killed last night. I was taking a walk down the corridor when the two of them came sprinting and they grabbed me and we hid in the Room of Requirement."

"Wait... they can't have seen it last night, we had potions today and Lavens was there!" Rose exclaimed.

I sighed, "It wasn't him. I'll get to that. Anyway, so they said they'd been out wandering when they saw Lavens talking to a cloaked man, and they saw that Lavens had, he had the dark mark. And then the cloaked man killed him, with the Killing curse. Al bumped into a suit of armor so they ran. We think the cloaked man has Polyjuice potion, and that's who we saw in class today."

My two friends stared at me like I'd grown another head. But they were staying silent, which was my cue to explain how I knew for certain that the man we'd all seen in the dungeons today was not, in fact, our Potions professor.

"You know how my senses are just a bit sharper than most people's?"

They nodded, and waited for me to continue.

"I knew the second I walked into the classroom today that the man at the desk wasn't Professor Lavens. James knew it too when he got there, and he is dead certain that it was the killing curse he saw last night. I know it's hard to believe."

"No, I felt something weird as I passed him in the hall earlier," Kaley admitted, "Like a tingle up my spine. I brushed it off, but it's too big of a coincidence now."

I looked to Rose and she just shrugged, "What do I know, right? I have no reason to doubt you now, after all the other crazy crap you've told us that's all turned out to be true."

I laughed halfheartedly, "I guess that's fair."

"So what are we going to do about it," Kaley asked, braiding her blonde hair over her shoulder.

I shrugged, "James and Al and I are planning some things to make it harder for him to make Polyjuice, but other than that, we really can't do anything else without landing ourselves in deep trouble."

"We're just going to wait it out?" Kaley asked, surprised.

"Yeah, unless we come up with something better. In the mean time, we'll try and figure out why the imposter is here in the first place."

................

It is safe to say that sabotaging the fake potions professor took over our lives for a good long while. James was successful in stealing all possible plants needed for Polyjuice, and we tossed them in the Black Lake later that night. I wished I could get the squid in the lake to promise he wouldn't rat us out for it, but I couldn't talk to fish like Adrian. And indeed, the imposter left Hogwarts that following weekend and didn't return for several hours. During those several hours, James and Albus searched his office and his classroom for anything that could prove our suspicions. 

They found nothing of use, and the next time Fake-Lavens was away, Rose and Kaley and I looked and found the same amount of nothing. Weeks passed, and although we were all still passing our classes(for the most part) we remained focused on finding the imposter's motive.

It was the middle of December before we made any sort of headway. And our headway didn't turn us in a good direction.

As it was our third year, Rose and Kaley and I were finally allowed to go into Hogsmeade on the weekends. I'd had to bully my mom into signing the permission form because she thought it put me in danger. Once I explained to her that the village was barely any different than the castle in terms of security(a bit of a stretch), she signed the slip. We were going shopping for Christmas gifts when Rose spotted Fake-Lavens sneaking into the back of Madam Rosmerta's pub.

Of course, I sent her and Kaley on his tail before I went around the other side. unfortunately, I ran into none other than James Potter. I almost toppled into the snow but he pulled me up by my arm before I could truly fall on my butt.

"What are you doing sneaking around back here?" I asked him.

"I could ask you the same. I saw him going around this building and I thought..."

I nodded, "I was doing the same thing."

"Join me, then?"

I just shrugged and looped my arm through his. Just as we rounded the corner to the back of the pub, some sort of spell, a flash of red crashed into James and he went flying backwards into the brick wall. He collapsed into the snow like a rag doll.

I turned to see who'd thrown the spell when Fake-Lavens emerged with a smirk on his face and his wand at the ready.

I screamed as loud as I could, hoping to warn someone, anyone nearby that there was an assault happening. But the imposter just chuckled, "Don't be silly, Alana, no one can hear you.  You thought I didn't notice you and your friends stalking me, snooping through my things and stealing from the greenhouses?"

I froze and stared at the man impersonating my once-favorite professor. If it was true, and he'd known this whole time what we were doing... I was so ashamed that I'd allowed us to get in such a mess. I hoped Rose and Kaley were far far away.

Suddenly, three more men appeared, each in black cloaks with skeleton masks covering their faces. One of them levitated James's limp form over to them and I screamed again, in vain, no doubt.

"What do you want? Don't take him, please. He's done nothing wrong!"

The imposter snarled and took two steps closer to me, "He is Harry Potter's son, he doesn't need to have done anything wrong, his very existence is a wrongdoing."

I yelled again but a spell hit me from behind, colliding with my head hard enough to make me see stars. Another spell had me thrown into the brick wall and the bright snowy village turned dark.